Rob Kearney has insisted that Leinster’s European form must improve if they are to have any hope of continental success this season.

The Blues kick off their European Rugby Champions Cup Pool 4 effort against Castres at the RDS on Saturday (BT Sport, 3.15pm).

It is their first game in the competition since last January as a defeat to Wasps marked the end of a disappointing campaign last season, although the province did subsequently recover to reach the Guinness PRO12 final.

Getting back on track in Europe remains a priority, however, and Kearney is keen to see Leinster make amends for their inconsistencies last season.

The full-back recently recovered from a knee injury to feature for the majority of last weekend’s PRO12 win over Munster and he is itching to get back into European action.

“It’s great to be back, to get 70 minutes under my belt last week was good and I’m just trying to build a lot of games together and just get out there,” said Kearney.

“I’m really looking forward to it, but certainly our team performance in Europe last year and probably my own too wasn’t great so you remember performances in certain competitions and it needs to be a level up from there.

“All the building has happened over the last five or six weeks and even in pre-season before that so everything we’ve done is to make sure that now coming into Round 1 and 2 of Europe that we’re in a really good place to kick on and to make sure that we make that step up from the domestic league.

“It is a step up [in Europe] and we’ll have to play better if we want to improve on what we produced last year.”

With Johnny Sexton ruled out of Saturday’s game due to a hamstring problem, Joey Carbery makes his European debut at out-half and Kearney claimed that Leinster’s more experienced players will have to step up in Sexton’s absence.

The full-back said: “Obviously in Europe you have to step it up a gear and with Joey coming in there as well for his European debut there’s an onus on the more experienced guys in the backline to help him and to step up and make sure to manage the game and bring a little bit of experience to it.”